The Vivian Girls' Everything Goes Wrong

So this is my latest attempt to get published. It's a little outside my wheelhouse, but I figured if I couldn't review this well enough then I probably shouldn't even bother with any website but my own. I think it came out pretty well, but I would say that. I'll let YOU decide!

Track List:

1. "Walking Alone at Night" - 1:41
2. "I Have No Fun" - 1:27
3. "Can't Get Over You" - 3:36
4. "The Desert" - 2:42
5. "Tension" - 2:30
6. "Survival" - 2:30
7. "The End" - 3:15
8. "When I'm Gone" - 3:29
9. "Out for the Sun" - 4:13
10, "I'm Not Asleep" - 2:01
11. "Double Vision" - 4:20
12. "You're My Guy" - 1:54
13. "Before I Start to Cry" - 2:23


Shoe gaze, the scene that celebrates itself.

It's a characterization of a band engrossed in the distortion of their sound, a band more conscious of their effects pedals than their live audience. The performance becomes a glorification of the fastidious sentience involved in the production of noise. So with the same stoic patience necessary to digest an album like My Bloody Valentine's Loveless I set out to conquer the Vivian Girls sophomore effort.

Their debut was something of a concept album, the concept being unambiguously articulated by the track listing itself. Love is a double edged sword, an accessible thesis to say the least, and certainly nothing new to the shoe gazing community. As the title Everything Goes Wrong implies, this follow up album is literally that. Everything went wrong for the girls at the conclusion of their premier leaving them in a state of nihilism, a platitudinous exoneration of the obvious metaphor for the numbing distortion of shoe gaze/nu-gaze. For the last two years, the Vivian Girls have been carving their own little niche between Marnie Stern's mind melting guitar and shoe gazers Crystal Stilts and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. As is often true of this brand of music, and it is certainly true in the case of Marnie Stern or My Bloody Valentine, satisfaction is not immediate.

Understanding the lyrics, is hardly the point. They've succeeded in bringing the heart, the driving force of the music, much closer to the surface without sacrificing their authenticity or thoroughly rehashing the first album. On the former, tracks like "Tell the World" or "Wild Eyes" could well have been borrowed from Nancy Sinatra or Dee Dee Warwick's songbook. The same could likely be said of "Walking Alone at Night" and "Can't Get Over You" on the first half of Everything Went Wrong. The difference is while the former covered the emotional spectrum of infatuation, the latter considers the aftermath. In the spirit of their burgeoning maturity, the Girls add a few new tricks to their repertoire. "Out for the Sun" and "Double Vision" stand out as the two longest tracks to date proving the Girls competent of more tenaciously complex musicality and narratives than the polarized and consciously disaffected lyrics of the debut. "Lord please help me put these thoughts to rest/He has another woman/He'll never be the best." Rationalizing love is not unlike affirming the brilliance of a madman, and of this fact, the Vivian Girls are keenly aware. If there's any doubt, the Girls set the record straight dispatching of any warmed over sentiment on "You're My Guy." The track starts off with "You're my guy/You fuck me all the time/I'm lonely every night" which pushes the needle on the closer "Before I Start to Cry" from facetious to downright flippant.

In the beginning, the Girls used the obscurity of distortion to euphemize (euthanize?) the extremes of emotion. A sort of shroud in defense of the underlying vulnerability most apparent in the climactic harmonies of "Where Do You Run To". On this record with guileless tracks like "Tension," "Survival" and "The End" in quick succession, the distortion accentuates the dogmatic attitude shift after everything goes wrong. Maturation does not beget assimilation. Progress is found in the honing of sensibilities, acceptance of the inevitable, but not capitulation; evolution instead of revolution.